Alvin Law believes in the power of positive attitude. He has built a career out of telling people to live the best life they can with the cards they have been dealt, just as he does.

“People take things for granted, and when you have no arms you tend not to do that,” he says.

Despite growing up in an era where there was much less awareness and infrastructure for people with disabilities, Law thrived in all aspects of life. Now in his life as a motivational speaker, he has brought his story to people on five continents.

In Saskatchewan, he enjoys a near-celebrity status thanks to 21 appearances on Telemiracle. You might remember him playing the drums with his feet.

He isn’t ashamed to trumpet his accomplishments, but at the same time he knows that everything he has done can largely be credited to the people who have helped him along the way — his adoptive parents, the teachers who didn’t give up on him and his loving wife.

“What they accomplished, that to me is the essence of this story,” he says.

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Law was born in Yorkton in 1960. During her pregnancy, his mother was given thalidomide, a drug used to ease nausea and other symptoms for expectant mothers. At the time, no one knew the consequences. Law and thousands more children worldwide were born deformed or with limbs missing.

Law was given up for adoption at just five days old. Although he says audiences will often gasp when told this, he doesn’t hold it against his birth parents. They were very poor and had two other children to take care of. Also, had they not done so, he never would have fallen into the care of the Laws, a Yorkton couple who raised him to embrace the things he was capable of.

From an early age, his adoptive parents forced him to learn self-sufficiency. They taught him to do almost anything with his feet.

“My mom was brilliant. She would make me do things like thread a needle, or sew buttons on a rag, to give me dexterity in my feet,” Law says.

They also made sure he was a part of the community, making friends with other kids.

“I wasn’t being hidden in a basement, or shut up in a room,” he says.

The family lived across the street from a school in Yorkton, so it seemed natural he would go there. But this was the 1960s, and the public school system wasn’t used to dealing with children with disabilities.

“Kids like me went to special-needs holding cells. That’s what they were. There wasn’t a curriculum, they were more like day cares,” Law says.

His parents weren’t having that. They were adamant he go to school with the rest of his friends, and be afforded the same opportunities.

“It was my dad who ended up talking to the principal and basically saying, ‘Look, we don’t know what he’s capable of,’” Law says.

He did well in school. The other children already knew him from around town so he doesn’t remember being bullied until later, when he moved to middle school. Even then, he chalks the teasing up to standard adolescent stuff. It passed quickly once he gained more confidence and showed what he could do.

“It just amazed me how he could get around,” says Ken Sherwin, a former guidance counsellor and principal at Law’s high school.

In particular, Sherwin remembers Law’s positive attitude.

“He was always happy. I never can ever remember him being upset about anything,” Sherwin says.

Law credits his father with teaching him that anger was never the right path. It’s something he carries through to this day as he speaks to crowds.

“I’m not up on stage bemoaning my life. I’m celebrating my life,” he says.

It was during his high school years that Law first came into the public spotlight. He was attending Camp Easter Seals, which caters to children with disabilities. A CBC television crew came out to do a news story and got footage of Law shooting a bow and arrow with his feet. The day after the story aired in 1976, Law was recruited as the Easter Seals “Timmy,” an ambassadorial position, for the next year.

As fate would have it, 1977 was the first year for Telemiracle. His work as a Timmy made him a natural choice for the program. People all over the province saw him play the drums alongside Brian Sklar and Prairie Fire.

“A lot of people had never seen that,” Law says.

For a time, he thought he would become a musician. He was able to play trombone with the help of a special stand that attached to a desk, and was even selected as first chair for the all-star band at a national high school competition. There was interest from some American universities, and talk of scholarships.

A conversation with Sherwin got him thinking in a different direction.

“He said I should think about getting a job where having no arms was going to be inconsequential. What we came up with was broadcasting,” Law says.

He attended Mount Royal in Calgary, then moved to Regina and worked as a radio DJ, flipping vinyl records. He liked the job, but would soon switch careers and head down the path to the career he still has today.

Law started working with the Saskatchewan Abilities Council in 1981. The UN had declared it the International Year of Disabled Persons, and Law was hired to speak at schools.

Then in 1985, Yorkton hosted Canada’s first-ever national youth leadership conference. As a former resident, Law was a natural choice for the program.

“The people there really thought he was something else. That was kind of the springboard to everything he is doing now,” Sherwin says.

His name started spreading. Finally, in 1988, Law decided to become a full-time professional speaker.

He was successful enough to get by, but had some trouble with the business side of things. In an era before the Internet, he found it hard to co-ordinate everything while being on the road so much.

“My reputation was getting out there that I was a really good speaker if you could track me down,” he says.

A turning point came in 1991 when he met Darlene, who is now his wife. She had seen him speak at a conference in Alberta and was introduced when they were hanging out with mutual friends afterward.

“I think what got me more than anything was his total acceptance of who and what he was,” Darlene says.

“There’s able-bodied people who are not that comfortable with who they are.”

Thing moved quickly. They met in March, went on their first date in June and moved in together in October. They were married in 1993.

Darlene, who describes herself as very organized, saw immediately that she could help Law with the business side of his career.

“The first time I went to his place I noticed a large pile of paper on his living room floor. When I starting looking through it I realized it wasn’t just mail. There was invitations to speak, contracts, cheques, everything,” she says.

“As good as Law is on stage, that’s how bad he was with the whole business thing.”

She took over the management side and they have never looked back. Law went from speaking almost exclusively for students to teachers associations, then other associations, then corporations and conferences. They moved to Calgary in 2000 and Law joined the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers.

Meanwhile he was working on writing his life story, an 11-year process he says was the hardest thing he has ever done. Here too, Darlene was instrumental. He gave her his first manuscript, which weighed in at 900 pages.

“She read it and said it was horrible,” Law says, laughing.

Darlene encouraged him to find the same voice he uses on stage. Finally, in 2007, he published Law’s Laws of Life, which recently went for its seventh print run.

Law says he has done more than 5,000 speaking engagements. He does around 120 a year and spends about 170 days a year travelling.

“What I have found most fascinating is my story is universal,” he says.

“I can go to Thailand, and use a translator, and they appreciate my story just as much as if I’m in Toronto.”

Law tries to make his presentations less about his disability and more about positivity. He is sometimes self-conscious about the show-offiness of playing drums or the piano with his feet, but understands the value it provides for his message.

“What people always say is, ‘Wow, if you can do that, what’s my excuse?’ ” he says.

He has no intention of slowing down. Travelling and speaking are what he loves to do.

“That’s all I can hope for, is to continue to do this until the end of my life,” Law says.

Although much of his program stays the same, there is polish and evolution that comes from his life experience.

“I’m a more mature version of Alvin Law, and I think as time goes by that will only grow,” he says.

As long as he is able, Law hopes to use his personal story of perseverance to help others make the best of their own lives.

“It’s a very big responsibility that I’ve never taken lightly,” he says.

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